


Constellations

by blueberrynewt



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Asexual Spock (Star Trek), Bisexual James T. Kirk, Bisexual Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Friendship, I'm really bad at figuring out what to tag things, Jim is a farmer, M/M, Multi, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-03-08 08:30:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18890932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueberrynewt/pseuds/blueberrynewt
Summary: There's not much to say about Jim Kirk. He's a prosperous farmer, a war vet, and pretty much alone in the world, which suits him just fine. Things change when a country doctor on his way from Georgia to San Francisco appears on his doorstep with a lopsided smile and a bottle of moonshine.





	1. Feet on the Ground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> update: now with gorgeous art by lejoursobre of tumblr! thank you!

August 12, ‘24. That’s the first day.

Sam's birthday.

It’s early afternoon, and James Kirk is restless again. He checks in with his men, makes sure everything is in order, and sets out up the road, in the opposite direction from town. His own fields, bountiful as ever, give way to other farms, and finally to open prairie. He finds the old game trail and follows it out into the grassland, eyes on the unchanging horizon. Being here reminds him, as it always does, of the old days with Sam. It seems so long ago, but Jim could swear he can hear their shouts of laughter, twenty years distant, still ringing in the still summer air.

He usually avoids thinking about Sam if he can help it, but out here, on his birthday, the memory of his brother is too strong to ignore. He wonders what life would be like if Sam were still alive. Would he have gotten married? Would Jim have a sister-in-law, maybe nieces and nephews?

As it is, Jim’s pretty much alone. He rolls that thought around for a minute, then tosses it aside. So what if he’s alone? He’s got a prosperous farm, the respect of his neighbors (well, mostly), a solid house to call home. Everything a man could want.

And yet… Jim sticks a blade of grass between his teeth and bites down on it. And yet, he can’t seem to settle down. The townsfolk all say he should be married by now. Rumors spring up every now and then, getting more elaborate each year he remains a bachelor. Jim’s not sure what the latest one is — is he impotent? Homosexual? In league with the Devil? It’s so hard to keep track. He does his best to ignore the rumors; living alone suits him.

Which isn’t to say that he doesn’t wonder if they’re right, sometimes. Not about the impotence or the devil-worship, but about him needing to get married one of these days. He knows it’s the thing to do; knows, also, that there are several young women in town who would be more than willing to marry him if he asked nicely. And, well, he’s _dallied_ , but he’s never had any serious interest in any of them. He just can’t really see the point.

Shade falls over his eyes, and Jim realizes he’s made it to the little stand of trees already. Funny, he didn’t think he’d been walking that long. He pauses, still gnawing on the blade of grass, and turns to look back towards town. It’s just a dust-colored smudge a few miles off, surrounded by farms and fields that stretch off into the distance. The English River wriggles by to the south, and off to the east he can just catch the glint of sunshine on the Iowa.

He knows the landmarks like he knows where his own hands are. For most of his life, they’ve circumscribed his world. The only time he was away from Riverside for more than a few days was during the war, and that’s another thing he prefers not to think about.

It’s hot. He can feel the moisture in the air around him, and his shirt clings to his back the same way strands of hair cling to his neck and temples. The trees are loud with cicadas, and their droning renders Jim a little drowsy. There’s something about cicadas on a hot summer day that almost puts you in a trance, and he stares at the horizon for a long time, enraptured by the blue sky and the green-gold fields, and the distant line where they seem to meet.

A bird wheels overhead, maybe a vulture, and Jim pulls himself out of his stupor. He looks around at the trees, imagines a teenaged Sam climbing up into the branches, daring his little brother to climb as high. Jim never backed down from a dare Sam gave him. Might have broken a bone or two as a result.

Jim stands there for a few more minutes, then squints at the sky, grunts, and turns for home.

 

***

 

Several hours later, he stands at the stove and stirs a pot of stew, shirt unbuttoned all the way. One thing about being unmarried is that he has to do his own cooking. Well, he could afford to hire someone, but he hasn’t. Doesn’t want to. He’s not a bad cook, anyway, and he likes doing things himself.

There’s a knock on the door, and Jim hastily buttons his shirt as he goes to answer it, leaving the stew to its own devices. When he opens the door, he’s surprised to see a total stranger standing on his porch, with a battered suitcase in one hand and an equally worn hat on his head.

“Howdy,” says the stranger. He’s Southern. Interesting.

“Hello,” says Jim dubiously. The other man’s eyes are nearly as blue as the sky behind him.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/161542031@N07/48537504116/in/dateposted-public/)

“Sorry to disturb you,” the stranger continues. “I jus’ need a place to stay for the night. Wondered if you’d be amenable.” Belatedly, he sticks out a hand. “I’m McCoy, by the way. Leonard McCoy.”

Jim shakes the proffered hand automatically. “Jim Kirk,” he replies. He studies the stranger. The man’s boots are scuffed and muddy, and his clothes could do with a wash. Some kind of vagrant. Still, Jim doesn’t have the heart to turn him away. “Come in. I was just making dinner.”

McCoy steps inside with a grateful nod and looks around with interest. Jim feels suddenly self-conscious — he doesn’t have visitors often, and his house probably looks like a pigsty to anyone other than himself.

“Sorry for the mess,” he offers, gesturing vaguely.

McCoy gives him a lopsided smile. “Believe me, it’s a lot better’n some places I’ve stayed.” He jiggles his suitcase in his hand. “‘Fraid I’m a little dusty. Is there someplace I can wash up?”

“Pump’s out back,” Jim tells him, and points to the backdoor. “You can put your luggage anywhere.” He returns to the stove, tests a carrot. “Dinner in ten minutes,” he calls after the stranger, who waves in acknowledgment as he steps outside.

They share a quiet meal of good stew and dark bread, which Jim gets from the baker in town. He’s a decent cook, but he can never get bread right.

When they’ve eaten, Jim decides it’s time to find out just who he’s been dining with. He folds his arms on the table and says, “So, Mr. McCoy. What brings you to Riverside?”

McCoy wipes his mouth and purses his lips before he answers. “Just passin’ through. Been on the road awhile.”

That’s not much of an answer. “From where?” Jim presses.

“Georgia.”

Jim gives a low whistle. “That’s a pretty long way. Where are you headed?”

“San Francisco.”

This whistle is less low. “Damn. What are you going to San Francisco for?”

“New job.” McCoy sits forward and readjusts his hands. “Change of scenery.”

“Fair enough.” Jim studies the man in front of him. He’s probably about a decade older than Jim, with sort of a world-weary expression that Jim’s seen on a lot of faces in his life. Not least his own. “What sort of job?”

“Got a friend at Saint Mary’s who says he can get me a job.” McCoy stops, then seems to realize that this answer doesn’t mean much to Jim. “I’m a doctor.”

Jim raises his eyebrows at that. “Oh.” Not your typical migrant worker, then. “Iowa’s a little out of your way, isn’t it?”

The doctor shrugs. “I’ve been hitchhiking, and beggars can’t be choosers, as they say. Besides,” he adds, “I got to enjoyin’ the scenery. Never saw this much of America before.”

“Mm.”

McCoy shifts in his seat again, and Jim realizes his questioning might have been less than decorous. “Sorry to pry,” he says. “We don’t get a lot of strangers around here, and those we do get usually stay in town. I’m not used to visitors.”

McCoy waves a hand. “‘S’alright. You’ve got a right to be curious.”

“Hm.”

They clean up from dinner together, then Jim goes outside to sit on the porch steps. The sun set a little while back, and stars are starting to appear against a dusky sky. Down on earth, fireflies are flickering to life over the fields. Jim watches the little lights as each insect rises a few feet above the ground in a straight line, then blinks out again. He wonders why they do that.

A minute or two later, footsteps approach and a body settles onto the step beside him. He looks over at McCoy and nods a welcome. They sit and look at the fireflies for a little, then Jim gestures and explains, “It’s my favorite time of day.”

“Mine, too,” McCoy agrees. He seems to be considering something, then says, “Listen, I’ve got a bottle of moonshine I’ve been savin’ since Kentucky for a special occasion. Wanna break into it?”

Jim can’t hold back a teasing smile. “Is this a special occasion?”

The doctor shrugs, apparently unperturbed. “Feels like one to me. What d’you say?”

“It’s your liquor. I’m happy to drink if you’re happy to share.”

McCoy goes and gets the bottle and a couple of glasses, then rejoins Jim. The bottle already has a fair bit of headspace, and Jim raises his eyebrows. “Saving it, huh?”

McCoy looks ruefully at the bottle. “Well, most of it,” he admits. He pours their drinks, takes a sip, and makes a face. “Still tastes awful,” he announces.

Jim tastes it and has to agree. He doesn’t drink much, not since Prohibition, but he knows enough to know that this stuff is horrible.

“Still,” McCoy continues, “at least it’s somethin’.”

Jim raises his glass. “To illegal distilleries across America.”

“And to the godawful hog piss that they sell me,” McCoy finishes, tapping his glass to Jim’s. They laugh and drink deeply.

“So,” prompts Jim when they’re on their third drinks. “Why’d you leave Georgia?”

McCoy eyes him. “Are you gettin’ me drunk jus’ so you can get information outta me?” His Southern drawl is getting more pronounced with each glass of the vile stuff they’re drinking.

“It’s your liquor,” he reminds the doctor.

“Hmph.” McCoy takes another sip, purses his lips, and says, “Nothin’ left for me there. Bad divorce.”

“Really?” It’s not easy to get a divorce. Jim doesn’t know but two couples who’ve ever done it. He’s curious, but tells himself not to question any further. McCoy’s business is his own.

“Yeah.” The doctor swirls his glass, looking troubled. “My daughter’s still back there. Hated leavin’ her, but it woulda been worse to stick around an’ only see ‘er from a distance.”

“Huh.” Jim can’t think of anything else to say to that, and takes another gulp of his drink.

McCoy takes a deep breath, seeming to shake off thoughts of home. “What about you?” he asks. “You’re a farmer?”

Jim gestures at the fields around them. “I’m a farmer,” he confirms. “Not much else to tell. Grew up here, went off to war, came back, and I’m still here.”

“You were in the war?”

“‘Course I was. I was twenty-eight when America got involved. Signed up right away. _Pro patria mori_ and all that. My brother did, too.”

“Brother?”

“Died in Compiègne, two weeks before the end.” Jim finishes his glass and pours himself another, grimacing as the liquor claws its way down his throat. He doesn’t want to talk about Sam. “What about you?” he asks, running a finger along the rim of his cup. “Were you ever in the trenches?”

McCoy gives him a sharp look. “I’m a doctor, not a soldier,” he almost snaps. He takes a drink, stares out at the night for a few seconds, then says, “I did my part.”

Jim supposes he did, at that.

 

***

 

Jim expects the doctor to pack up and leave in the morning, and is surprised when McCoy seems inclined to linger. After breakfast, Jim is out in the fields trying to mend a broken sprinkler when a shadow falls across him and he looks up to see his new friend standing there. He assumes the doctor has come to make his farewells, and gets to his feet.

“Time to hit the road, Doc?” he asks.

“I — well, not exactly.” McCoy shifts his weight uncertainly. Jim notices that he’s not holding his suitcase. “Actually,” he continues, “I wanted to ask if I could stay on a while longer.”

“Stay on?” Jim is taken aback.

“I don’t wanna impose, or anythin’,” McCoy says quickly. “It’s just…I’m in no hurry to get to San Francisco, really. And I like it here. I like your farm.” He seems to chew on his next words. “I like _you_.”

Jim can’t help smiling at that. “Keep up the flattery, Doctor, and I’ll never let you go.” He stuffs his hands in his pockets. “You can stick around.”

“Thanks.” The doctor looks genuinely relieved. “I’ll earn my keep,” he adds, glancing around at the clusters of men at work in the fields.

Jim raises his eyebrows. “You know anything about farming?”

“No,” McCoy admits. “But I’m a bright young chicken. I’ll catch on.”

 

***

 

The doctor is true to his word. At first, Jim is amazed by his ignorance of the rudimentary skills of farming, but McCoy is willing enough and a very quick study, and before long he’s pulling his own weight as well as any of the farmhands Jim employs. He’s a better cook than Jim, too, and soon puts himself in charge of kitchen operations. Jim is repeatedly surprised by how easy it is to share his life with this man he barely knows, how little he misses his solitude.

One morning, about a week after the doctor turned up on his doorstep, Jim strolls down the road toward town. It’s a muggy day, and overcast, threatening thunderstorms in the afternoon. The road feels good under his boots, and for a few seconds Jim allows himself to enjoy the idea of just…not stopping. Walking down this road to towns he’s never seen or heard of. Leaving it all behind, the way McCoy did.

He laughs at himself and kicks a pebble. “Quit your dreaming, Jimmy,” he mutters, echoing his mother. _Keep your feet on the ground_.

His errands in town don’t take too long. When he’s done, he looks at the sky again, sticks his hands in his pockets, and decides he has enough time to grab a meal at the soda fountain before heading back. He doesn’t really feel like being at home right now, but he doesn’t want to get caught in the rain. He’s wearing his good hat, after all.

He’s barely started his meal when someone pulls out the chair next to him and sits down, turning sideways and leaning against the counter. Jim glances up. It’s Casey Olsen, the phramacist who runs the drugstore where they’re sitting. Not a particular friend, but they’ve known each other a long time. In a town this size, that’s true of pretty much everyone.

“Saw you come in,” Casey says by way of greeting. “Thought I should tell you. There’s all sorts of rumors about you.”

Jim grunts and takes another bite. What else is new?

Casey purses his lips and adjusts his arms. “They’re saying you’ve got a stranger staying with you.”

Ah. His field hands must have talked. That’s to be expected. In Riverside, any deviation from business as usual is sure to be gossiped about, and word travels fast.

“That’s true,” he admits.

“What’s his business here?”

Jim shrugs. “He’s just passing through. Wanted a place to stay.”

“He’s staying on a long time for someone who’s ‘just passing through.’ Where’s he from? Where’s he going? Why’s he here?”

“Georgia, San Francisco, and because he damn well wants to be,” Jim answers. “It’s a free country, Casey. He can go where he pleases.”

“Hm.” Casey takes a deep breath, then plows on. “Jim, some people are starting to think that you and he are — that you’re —”

Jim fixes him with a stare. “Who I let stay in my house is my business, Mr. Olsen.” Casey opens his mouth to ask something else, but Jim cuts him off with a nod out the window. “Looks like nice weather this afternoon, huh?”

Casey frowns, but doesn’t try to force the subject. Before long, he excuses himself and leaves Jim to finish his meal in peace, saying something about prescriptions that need to be filled.

Jim eats quickly and hurries home down the road, glancing at the sky every minute or so. He makes it back just in time and watches the rain arrive from the shelter of his house. Doctor McCoy is seated at the table, writing what looks like a letter. Jim watches him for a minute, then turns back to the window.

The townsfolk can think what they please. Jim knows who he is.

 

***

 

Late that night, the two of them sit outside and watch the stars. After the storm, a wind came up and cleared away all the clouds, and the night sky is as dark and as bright as Jim’s ever seen it. The moon hasn’t risen yet, and they’ve blown out every lamp and candle in the house. Jim lies back, folds his arms behind his head, and lets out a long breath.

“I used to dream about the stars,” he tells McCoy, smiling as he picks out the constellations above him. “My mother used to scold me for having my head in the clouds. She didn’t realize it was actually out in the stars.”

“That’s a long way off for your head to be,” the doctor remarks drily. “How’d you ever get it back?”

Jim laughs. “Oh, I have my ways.”

McCoy chuckles. “I’m not sure I’d like livin’ in the stars,” he says after a while. “Earth’s good enough for me.”

Jim raises his head to look over at the doctor, then sets it back down. “Not Georgia, though?”

There’s a pause. “Nah,” McCoy assents after a little while. “Been there too long. Same people every damn day. Got to feelin’ like a cage.”

“Hm.” Jim picks a blade of grass and sticks it in his mouth. He chews idly for a few seconds. “I know what you mean.”

McCoy shifts beside him, and Jim knows the doctor has turned to look at him. He stares at the sky.

“You could come with me, you know,” McCoy suggests. His voice is quiet, tentative — a tone Jim hasn’t heard before from this charming, sharp-tongued country doctor.

“What, to San Francisco?” Jim looks over and meets McCoy’s gaze, then laughs and looks away again. “What would a country boy like me do in a big city?”

“You’d find somethin’. Big city means there’s lots to do.”

Jim chews his blade of grass some more. “I can’t just pack up and leave. I’m a farmer, Doc. The land’s a part of me.”

“Hm.” McCoy doesn’t sound convinced, but he doesn’t push it. “Y’know,” he adds in a lighter tone, “you could just call me Leonard.”

Jim grins at the stars. “Then I guess you could just call me Jim.”

 

***

 

More than three weeks go by since Doctor McCoy's arrival, and Jim sometimes forgets he hasn’t known the man his whole life. They dine together, swap childhood stories, make their way steadily through the bottle of Kentucky moonshine. The stuff grows on you.

Jim’s standing outside at the water pump, scrubbing a pot while the sun sinks into the west. He holds up the pot and angles it to catch the light, assessing his work. Gravel crunches behind him, and he turns to see McCoy approaching.

“Need any help?” the doctor asks, gesturing at the pot and the pump.

Jim shakes his head. “No thanks, Leonard, I’m just about done.”

Leonard nods, but doesn’t leave. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and purses his lips, looking past Jim to the glowing horizon. Jim straightens, letting the pot dangle by his side, and nudges the other man’s shoulder.

“All right,” he says, “What’s on your mind?”

“I, uh —” Leonard takes his hands out of his pockets and rubs them together absently. “I think it’s time I was movin’ on,” he blurts at last.

“Oh.” Jim looks at the pot in his hand and scrubs at an imaginary blemish. “Well, sure. San Francisco’s still a long way off.”

“Yeah.”

“It’ll take you a while to hitchhike all that way.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll want to get there before it starts getting cold.”

“Yeah.”

“When were you thinking of leaving?”

“Tomorrow mornin’.” Leonard shrugs. “It’s not as if I have a lot of packin’ to do. Besides, I don’t like to draw these things out too much.”

“I see.” Jim nods. “Well, I —” He realizes he doesn’t actually know what to say, and leaves the sentence hanging.

Leonard looks at the ground, then back at Jim. “I’m gonna miss you,” he says. “It’s been real nice gettin’ to know you. Thanks for keepin’ me around as long as you did.”

Well, now Jim has to say something. He twists his scrubbing rag around his hand. “I’ll miss you, too, you old codger,” he confesses. He claps Leonard on the shoulder. “You’re a good man to have around.”

“So are you.” Leonard gives him that lopsided smile. “Well, I jus’ wanted to let you know.”

“Right.” Jim squints at the house, then says, “Say, you still got any of that moonshine?”

“Thought you’d never ask.” Leonard grins and beckons him toward the door. “There’s just enough for a glass or two each.”

 

***

 

They have breakfast together in the morning. Leonard’s suitcase is by the door, and they don’t talk very much over their eggs. Jim wonders how long it’ll be before he finds another friend like this one. Maybe never.

When they’re both finished, Leonard wipes his mouth and makes as if to gather the dishes to clean them. Jim waves him away.

“You’d better get going if you want to catch a ride,” he says. “If anyone’s leaving Riverside this morning, they’ll be going soon.”

“Right.” Leonard bounces on the balls of his feet and looks up at the ceiling. “If you ever change your mind about leavin’ —”

Jim gives him a small smile. “I’ll look you up,” he assures him. Leonard nods several times, but makes no move for the door. Jim comes over, slings an arm over the slighter man’s shoulders, and steers him toward his luggage. He puts the suitcase — very light without the bottle of moonshine — in Leonard’s hand, claps the doctor’s hat on his head, and pats him on the cheek.

“Now, off with you,” he says, opening the door and urging Leonard through it. Leonard gives him a last, searching look, then nods and sets off down the stairs and up the road to town.

Jim leans against the doorframe and folds his arms. He stands that way for several minutes, watching the dwindling form of the doctor, then turns back inside and shuts the door behind him.

“Keep your feet on the ground, Jimmy,” he tells himself, and goes outside to wash the dishes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok, writing in a time period I know next to nothing about is a challenge. everything I know about the 1920s, I've learned in the past 24 hours on Wikipedia. the worst thing is that I have no idea how people talked, so I've written them mostly just...normal, without any modern slang? I hope their voices sound ok. I didn't want to try working in 20s slang, because I'm sure it would've been horrible and unnatural. do forgive me.
> 
> ANYWAY I got the idea for this fic a couple days ago and kept coming back to it, so here ya go. for once I actually have semi-solid plans for a lot of it, though I don't know how many chapters it'll be and I'm not sure where I'll end it. hope someone enjoys this nonsense lol


	2. Nothing's What It Was Before

April 13 isn’t Jim’s favorite day of the year.

It’s the day he saw Sam for the last time, back in ‘19.

The sun is out again. Jim looks out his bedroom window and has to squint against the bright white glare of the world outside. The snow, which fell two nights past, melted a little in yesterday’s afternoon sunshine. It froze again overnight, and now there’s a crust of ice on top that throws back sunlight like a goddamn mirror.

Jim purses his lips and considers the scene. It’s beautiful, but it means trouble for everyone who’s gotten their crops started already. Everyone thought spring had come, and they were eager to take advantage of as much of the growing season as possible. Now their early starts will be frozen and dead under the three-inch blanket of snow.

Jim hasn’t planted yet. He had a hunch.

People used to make fun of his hunches, but he’s learned to trust them. He’s done well because of it, has a good instinct for what crops to plant and when, and his neighbors have long since stopped telling him to use the Almanac like everyone else. They still don’t listen when he warns them, though.

Well, that’s their problem. Jim dresses and leaves his room, heading for the kitchen and breakfast. As he passes the spare room, he pauses for a fraction of a second, glancing inside as if he expects to see someone in there. A doctor, maybe.

Jim scoffs and scratches the back of his head. He keeps doing that. Little things keep reminding him of Leonard McCoy — the clink of glasses, the taste of beans, a pair of dusty boots. A few days ago he glimpsed someone fifty yards distant who had the same approximate height and built as the doctor, and almost cried out in greeting before he recognized Dustin Peters. Dustin Peters would give Jim a knock upside the head as soon as look at him.

It’s ridiculous, really. They only knew each other for three weeks, Jim’s not sure why he’s so fixated on the man.

Well, that’s a lie. McCoy was the best friend he ever made.

Jim eats his breakfast and lingers at the table, sipping at his coffee. There’s plenty of work he has to do, snow or no, but he can’t bring himself to go do it just yet. Snow is a good canvas for daydreams, and he lets his mind wander as he gazes out the window. He thinks of Sam, his parents, the girl he’d thought he was going to marry when he was fourteen. (She’s long since wed to one of his neighbors, and has four children. They’re still friends.) He also thinks, more often than not, of a certain country doctor with baby blue eyes and the soft, steady hands of a surgeon. He wonders how McCoy is doing.

A clock chimes, and Jim starts. Coffee sloshes in his cup, and he automatically starts to take a sip, but stops when he realizes the brew has gone cold. He’s been sitting here for longer than he intended.

“Damn it,” he mutters, checking the time. If he spent every morning like this, he’d be a poor farmer indeed. “ _Damn_ it!” He slams his cup on the table. Cold coffee splashes onto his hand, and he curses again.

The day doesn’t get much better from there. He does his best to put himself into the work, but it’s not the kind of work that takes your mind off of things. With snow on the ground, he’s stuck catching up on bookkeeping, deciding which crops to plant in which fields this year, checking his stores of seed. All the dull little administrative tasks he generally avoids until he can’t put them off any longer. He can’t get into it, can’t bring himself to care.

He’s had bad days before. After his parents died, he had a lot of days when the work seemed meaningless and futile. But it’s been a while since he was this bad, and this particular bad day has been going on for several months.

He pauses and scratches behind his ear with the pen he’s using. When exactly did this all begin? He thinks back, furrows his brow, rolls his eyes, and gets back to work. It began the day Leonard McCoy left. Of course.

“My God,” he mutters to himself, but even that phrase reminds him of the doctor. This is hopeless. He puts down the pen, throws on a coat and a hat, and marches out the door into the dazzling world outside. Maybe a walk will clear his head.

He walks away from town, up the road and past the place where the old game trail is now hidden from sight. He takes some comfort in the crunch of snow under his boots, the little puffs of steam his breath makes, the feeling that he could walk on and on and just disappear into the endless field of white that stretches out before him. He tries to subsume himself in sensation, pays special attention to the rustle of his clothing, the scrape of cold air down his throat, the warmth of his hands clenched in his pockets, as if by doing so he can escape from the world that no longer makes sense the way it used to. It works for a while.

Eventually, Jim’s legs begin to complain at the pace he’s setting them, and he grinds to a halt. He’s a few miles out, far enough that the snow on the road is still pristine here. He turns and looks at the unwavering line of his footprints. They look, he thinks, like the steps of a man who knows where he’s going. If only that were true.

Well, there’s still work to be done. Jim sighs, grunts, casts another look at the far horizon, then starts retracing his steps. The return trip seems longer, and by the time his house is in sight it’s already afternoon. Past lunchtime, his stomach tells him.

When he first makes out his farm in the distance, he stops and looks at it for a long minute before carrying on. He keeps watching it as he walks, thinking something will change as he draws nearer, but it doesn’t. The realization settles in his gut like a rock.

It doesn’t feel like home anymore.

He does his utmost to smother the thought. It seems almost sacrilegious, to feel so ill at ease in the house he grew up in, the house where Sam grew up, the house where his parents died. His entire life, with the exception of the war, has happened on this farm. He can’t just stop feeling that, all of a sudden.

He goes about his business, and this time manages to be reasonably productive. By the time he goes to bed, he feels…if not exactly _good_ , at least a little closer to who he’s supposed to be. Which is good enough.

 

***

 

The next Sunday, Jim walks into town for church. He greets the people he meets along the way, all in their Sunday best, and they wave or nod or call out in reply. These are the people he’s known all his life, the people who populate his world. The church itself houses the school he attended, along with Sam and all the other children of Riverside.

All through the service, Jim is restless. He has trouble keeping up with what Reverend Jacobsmeier is talking about, and catches himself jiggling his leg, tapping his fingers, chewing on his lip. He’s grateful when the bell rings and everyone files out of the church, moving from reverent silence to friendly chatter as they emerge into the open air. The sun’s out again, and the snow is quickly melting away into slush. A few children take to hurling wet snowballs at each other.

“Good day, Mr. Kirk,” says a voice behind him. He turns to see Irene Grant smiling up at him. She’s one of the young ladies he’s considered marrying — pretty, and friendly, and open.

“Good day, Miss Grant,” he replies. He nods, touches his hat, and wonders why she seems so far away.

He lingers in town for a while. It being Sunday, nobody’s working, so he might as well try to enjoy the company of his neighbors. The thaw seems to be brightening their spirits.

Early in the afternoon, he runs into some old friends. Duncan Steadman and Rufus Garman are old schoolmates of his, both farmers, and Charlie Hays is a fellow vet. Charlie runs the general store in town, and sometimes he and Jim get together to talk about the war. Jim gives them a nod.

“Hi, fellas,” he says.

“Hi, Jim,” says Charlie. He glances at the men beside him. “Listen, you got any plans for tonight?”

Jim shrugs. “Not as such. Why?”

“We were thinking of going out to Iowa City tonight,” Rufus informs him.

“To take advantage of the local refreshments,” Duncan explains in a low voice.

Ah. Of course. Riverside is too small to support its own speakeasy, so ever since the Eighteenth Amendment forced the old saloon to close down, the men of Riverside make the trip to Iowa City when they need a drink.

“On a Sunday?”

“Care to join us?”

Jim considers the offer. Speakeasies aren’t among his favorite places — crowded and dirty in a way that reminds him of times he’d rather forget, and generally run by unsavory characters he’s not interested in meeting. But a night out and a few drinks might help take his mind off things. “Sure.”

Charlie grins. “Seven o’clock, my house,” he says. “Don’t be late.” Charlie is one of the few people in Riverside who owns an automobile.

“I’ll see you then.” Jim nods again and moves on. Melting snow squeaks and splashes where he steps.

 

***

 

In Iowa City, the four men find their way to a doorway set a few feet below the sidewalk, and hurry inside. The speakeasy is low-ceilinged, cramped, and popular. Someone jostles Jim and he tenses, glancing around. He wonders if coming was a mistake.

Three and a half drinks later, he’s still moody but a good bit calmer. He purses his lips and swirls his drink around in its glass, watching the way the low light dances on the spinning surface of whatever he’s drinking. The other three are laughing at something. Jim tips his head back and pours the rest of his drink down his throat.

“You’re real quiet, Jim,” remarks Charlie. Jim sets down his glass and sees that his friends are all looking at him, curiosity and expectation in their eyes. He looks at them all, goes to take another sip, discovers that his glass is empty, and sets it down again.

“I’m gonna sell my farm,” he announces to the tabletop.

The pronouncement is met with a few seconds of silence. Duncan is the first to laugh, and Rufus joins in a second later. Charlie, who knows Jim the best, looks at him for a few more seconds before letting out a confused chuckle.

“Good one,” says Rufus, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand.

“I gotta say,” adds Duncan, “you had me going for a second.”

Jim stares resolutely at a knot in the wood of the table. “‘S’not a joke,” he insists. “I’m gonna sell.”

“What the hell for?” asks Charlie.

“Watch your mouth, Chuck,” says Jim with a faint grin. “It’s a Sunday.”

“Answer the goddamn question, Jim.”

Jim shrugs, leans back, and watches a card game taking place on the other side of the room. He can see the cards of one of the players, and silently urges the stranger to go ahead and fold already. The guy across from him isn’t bluffing.

“I’m leaving,” he says, in answer to Charlie’s question.

“Leaving?” repeats Rufus, looking both dumbfounded and disbelieving. “To go where?”

“San Francisco. You want the farm? I’ll sell it at a bargain.”

“Now, wait a minute.” Charlie’s brow is furrowed. “You still haven’t said why you think you’re leaving Riverside. You’ve never wanted —”

“Haven’t I?” Jim leans forward and finally looks Charlie in the eye. “You don’t know what I have or haven’t wanted.”

“But you never said — you love that farm.”

He shrugs again. “I did. Can’t anymore.”

“But _why not_?” Charlie folds his arms.

Jim orders another drink. The man at the other table doesn't fold, and loses the hand.

 

***

 

He knows they half-expect him to go back on it all once he’s sober. He hadn’t planned on telling anyone yet, anyway. If he’s honest with himself, he hadn’t been sure it was what he wanted to do until he said it aloud under the influence of several glasses of Caribbean rum.

Now that it’s been said, though, it’s perfectly clear. He’ll sell his farm, and he’ll go to San Francisco. What he’ll find there, he’s not totally sure. He’s going anyway.

People start to give him curious looks in the street. He’s been the subject of some gossip for years, but never this much all at once. He wonders what wild theories they’re concocting about his sudden urge to run away to San Francisco. He doesn’t ask, and nobody tells him.

Once it’s clear that he’s serious about selling, there’s interest from several quarters. Mostly other established farmers looking to add to their land, but there’s also Randall Hutchinson, the third son of Jim’s neighbor Martin Hutchinson, who wants to get started as a farmer but can’t count on inheriting any of his father’s land. In the end, Jim sells the house and half the land to young Randall, and the other half to Duncan.

He has to clean out the house, of course. Most of the furniture he leaves for Randall, including it in the price of the house. Everything else he gives away or sells, to whoever he can find who’ll take it. He packs two suitcases of belongings: one with clothes and other basic necessities, like a razor; the other with an armful of items he couldn’t stand to part with, plus some books, a wad of money, and a few train timetables.

He leaves in June.

Riverside has its own train station, with trains going to and fro between Iowa City and What Cheer. It’s the former that Jim boards, heading north again. He watches the countryside trundle by and thinks about trains in Europe. Packed with soldiers on their first deployment: fresh and prideful, ready to kill and die for their country. Packed with soldiers coming home after far too long.

It’s only fifteen miles to Iowa City, and soon he’s lifting his luggage out onto the platform, automatically reaching out to help the woman who disembarks after him, and who is carrying entirely too much for one person to handle. Then it’s a tedious hour waiting in the station, before the next train arrives to take him to Council Bluffs.

That’s where the real journey will begin. Council Bluffs is the starting point of the Pacific Railroad, which stretches all the way to San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Jim’s never seen the Pacific. He wonders if it’s very different from the Atlantic.

He eats in the dining car for lunch, chats with the waiter and with his fellow passengers. The food isn’t bad. The scenery isn’t bad, either: all blue skies and far-off horizons. Even from the train, he can smell the late spring air of his home state, and he aches a little as he wonders how long it will be before he comes back. Will he ever? He hasn’t thought that far ahead, hasn’t dared to contemplate the future. What if he never again stands in the rooms his family built and lived in, never again walks across an endless prairie with the sky like an overturned bowl of perfect blue?

 _I didn’t say goodbye_ , he thinks, and is ashamed.

He’s dozing when they pull into Council Bluffs that evening, his cheek pressed uncomfortably against the train window. He feels bleary. He gathers his luggage and makes his way off the train, and the fresh air revives him a bit. He looks at the sky, then at the timetable for the next train. He has a while.

He leaves the station and wanders around until he finds a field that nobody seems to be using, and sits under a tree. It’s nearly midsummer, and the sky’s still light. He leans back against the tree and shuts his eyes, breathing deeply. After a few minutes, he opens his eyes and sits up, pressing his palms to the soil beside him. It’s soft and loamy to the touch. He drinks in the horizon, tilts his head up to see the leaves rustling in a light breeze, gilded by the low sun. He takes a few more long, deep breaths, and feels at home.

 _Goodbye, Iowa,_ he thinks, and lets it go.

He wanders around Council Bluffs for the rest of the time he has. It’s a much bigger town than Iowa City, and compared to Riverside, it’s enormous. He gets dinner at a restaurant on a quiet back street, then heads back to the station.

Boarding this train carries a certain sense of finality. It’s the step that will take him off of Iowan soil, the definitive point of his journey. As if selling his farm wasn’t final enough. He laughs at himself and gets on the train. Just a few days to San Francisco, now.

The trip is uneventful, for the most part. He makes friends with the people who sit near him, passes uncomfortable nights trying to sleep in his seat, and quickly grows tired of the food in the dining car. The scenery is spectacular, particularly where the train passes through mountain ranges. He hasn’t seen much of mountains, and stares avidly at craggy, snowy peaks and steep river ravines. He sees a bear, a herd of deer, something that might have been a bobcat. He catches glimpses of human lives, too: a boy running across a field with his dog, a young couple standing by a lake, an old woman carrying an enormous bundle on her back. He wonders about all of them.

The train is like a long dream, and he can hardly believe it when they arrive at last in Oakland. He is swept up in a stream of passengers leaving the train, and lets the flood carry him to a window where he buys a ticket for the ferry across the bay. The ferry ride passes in a disbelieving daze, as he watches the skyline of San Francisco loom bigger and bigger across the water. It’s so _tall_.

He gets off the boat and wanders through the ferry terminal building, which is impressive enough to be the town hall of a city like Council Bluffs. Coming out the other side, he’s met with a cacophony of people and automobiles, streaming by and always seeming to be in one another’s way. For the first time, it hits him just how big a city he’s come to, and how lost he’ll be among all these hordes of people. He wavers for just a second.

How the hell is he going to find Leonard?

He didn’t plan for this. Typical. He made the decision so rashly, based on gut instinct more than anything else, and avoided thinking about it in too much detail. Thinking about it scared him, so he just _went_.

Well, bully for him. Now what?

He steadies himself. Leonard told him the name of the hospital he was going to work at. Jim takes a breath and goes back in his memory. It was their first evening together. He'd been asking too many questions.

St. Mary’s! That’s it. He’s sure, because it’s the same as the name of the church back in Riverside. He’d laughed to himself at that, and filed the name away. St. Mary’s Hospital.

He asks a group of passersby for directions and they point him to the streetcar. He boards, lets the vehicle carry him deeper into the heart of the city, then disembarks and walks the last mile or two to the hospital. He eyes the people who pass him on the sidewalk, and they all seem cultured and glamorous. He fiddles with the worn-out end of one sleeve.

He stops in front of an imposing white building that could probably fit all the houses in Riverside inside it. This is it, then. He pushes through the door and lets it swing shut behind him. At a desk, a nurse looks up.

“Good afternoon, sir,” she greets him. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m here to see Dr. McCoy,” he tells her. “Personal call. Tell him…tell him it’s an old friend.” He almost gives his name, but he wants to see the look on Leonard’s face when he sees who it is.

The nurse looks a little puzzled, but relays the message. Jim stands in the hospital lobby and looks around him, hands in his pockets. It’s a pleasant enough place, as hospitals go. Fairly old. The sun slants in through a window, and the street outside is a swarm of bodies.

 _Welcome to San Francisco_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> on a scale of 1 to “sell your entire livelihood and move 2000 miles to be with a guy you knew for 3 weeks last year who you’re not even sure is gay,” how impulsive are you?
> 
> this chapter fought me a bit. it's pretty low on character interactions, and is mostly internal to Jim, which makes it hard to move along even when I know where I want to take it. sorry 'bout all that. also, I'm uploading at 3 am after too many hours of writing when I finally got into the swing of it, so there's probably some polishing to be done.
> 
>  
> 
> fun facts!
> 
> 1) the Wailin' Jennys song Prairie Town was one of the primary inspirations for this story, and this entire chapter is pretty much one big reference. that's where the chapter title is from.
> 
> 2) I've done enough googling about the 20s that facebook is now giving me ads for modern speakeasies. is this victory or defeat?
> 
> 3) the general store in modern Riverside is called Casey’s. it’s apparently part of a chain across the whole Midwest, but I’m choosing to believe that it’s named after Casey Olsen (the first character name I came up with for this fic).
> 
> 4) St. Mary's Church and St. Mary's Hospital are both real, though I didn't know about the church when I picked the hospital as Leonard's destination.
> 
> 5) I've typed the word 'hospital' a fair bit tonight, and every time I do it I accidentally type 'hospitcal' at first.
> 
> 6) I only found out today that August 12 (the date of the first scene in Chapter 1) is Sam Kirk's birthday, and had to go back and edit to reflect that. I didn’t originally have a date attached to this chapter, but was thinking April, so when I saw that Sam is supposed to have died on April 13, I went with that.
> 
> 7) Jim’s train journey is as accurate as I could figure out from my brief internet research. Riverside was on a train line from Iowa City to What Cheer, starting in 1879. The first Transcontinental Railroad (aka the Pacific Railroad), ran from Council Bluffs, IA to Oakland.
> 
> 8) Rev. Jacobsmeier was the real pastor of St. Mary's Church in Riverside, IA for 40 years starting in 1905.


	3. Uncharted Territory

The stairwell echoes with Leonard’s footsteps as he trudges down them, rubbing his hands together with nerves. Not that he minds the excuse to absent himself from his research partner for a few minutes — the man’s a menace, with his cool reserve and his damnable smugness and his _logic_ — but Leonard dislikes being kept in the dark. What old friend could be calling on him here, and why wouldn’t such a friend give their name? He toys with the idea that it’s a ruse, but he can’t see why anyone would go to the trouble.

He pushes the door open with his foot and emerges into the well-lit lobby. He glances around, taking in the room, and his eyes settle on a figure standing a little away from the front desk, hands in his pockets. The figure leans back to look at the ceiling, and he looks _very_ much like — could it be? It couldn’t. _No_ — yes?

His shoes scuff the polished floor.

“James T. Kirk,” Leonard calls out, not bothering to hide his amazement. The figure turns and by God, it _is_ him, all travel-stained and suntanned, looking wildly out of place in this world of concrete and steel and fancy dresses. Leonard hurries forward. Everything is a little too bright and a little too blurry, and the floor seems to be far away. Kirk beams back at him, a hand going automatically to his hat. Leonard has a vivid memory of the first time they met, in a farmhouse doorway on a muggy August afternoon.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/161542031@N07/48537504176/in/dateposted-public/)

Leonard stops a little distance from Jim, folds his arms, and raises a stern eyebrow. “You tellin’ me I rushed a surgery for this?”

Jim blanches visibly and starts to stammer. “I, I — Doc, you didn’t —”

“Hmph.” Leonard lets Jim panic for another second or two, then a slow grin spreads across his face. He lets out a laugh. “Had you goin’ there, didn’t I? ‘Course I didn’t rush a damn surgery. I’m a doctor, not a monster.”

“Oh.” Jim laughs in relief. “Good Lord, McCoy, you shouldn’t scare me like that. I’ve got a very delicate constitution, you know.”

“Lucky there’s a doctor on hand, then.” They both laugh again.

They step forward, clasp hands, clap each other on the shoulder. Leonard knows he’s staring. Jim is just as he was, callused and steady and certainly more at home in an open field somewhere than in this place. What the hell is he doing in San Francisco?

“What the hell are you doin’ in San Francisco?” Leonard asks, and his voice sounds tinny in his ears, like he’s hearing himself through a telephone.

Jim grins, a little ruefully. “Iowa got a little dull after you left,” he admits.

“And you just thought you’d pop over for a visit, huh?”

“Actually, I —” Jim rubs the back of his neck. “I sold my farm.”

“You _what_?” Leonard drops Jim’s hand in surprise. “What on earth for?”

“Seemed like the thing to do.” Jim shrugs and looks at the wall. “It’s like you said. There was nothing left for me there.”

“There was _everythin’_ left for you!” Leonard feels himself stiffening, almost angry. Why? “That place was your entire life, you can’t just _drop_ it. Your family —”

“My family’s all dead.”

“— your family built that place, lived out their lives there — you had _roots_ , Jim, not like me —”

Jim stills, his smile gone. “What do you know about it?” he retorts. “You think I just gave up everything for — for no reason?” He shakes his head. “I’ve been _miserable_ , all right? Ever since you left. If I had roots, it’s for damn sure I don’t anymore.” He folds his arms and glares.

Leonard stares at him for a few seconds, still unbelieving, then slumps. He purses his lips, looks toward the ceiling, and sighs. “All right. All right. Listen, I, uh — I have to work for a few more hours. I’ll give you my address.” He borrows a piece of paper from the nurse at the front desk to write it down, then digs a key out of his pocket. “Let yourself in, make yourself at home. I’ll — I’ll see you this evenin’.”

Jim studies him a moment longer, then nods and takes the key. “Thanks,” he murmurs. He nods again, picks up a pair of suitcases from a chair, and turns to leave. Leonard halts him with a hand on his arm, and Jim looks back with raised eyebrows.

Leonard examines those eyes. He’d forgotten their color.

He swallows. “It’s really good to see you.”

Jim smiles like that’s the best news he’s ever heard.

“It’s really good to see you, too, Doc.”

 

***

 

His research partner asks him who it was who wanted to see him. Leonard knows he’s not actually interested in the answer, is just trying to maintain a ‘cordial working relationship’ or what-have-you, and brushes off the question with a mutter about an old friend passing through.

They’re working on a new X-ray machine, something more widely practical than the old portable models Leonard worked with during the war. His research partner understands how the machine works, how different materials scatter the radiation differently and how that information gets translated into an image that a doctor can work with. Leonard is there to make sure the new device will be practical in a working hospital setting, and figure out how to manage the associated risks. People have died messing with X-rays.

If he’s honest, Leonard doesn’t like the machine much more than he likes the man he’s working with (who might as well be a machine himself, for all the pleasure of his company). But they’re useful, and they’re needed, and he’s going to do his damnedest to make sure this one works as well as possible. Disagreeable colleagues notwithstanding.

Still, he’s glad when his shift is over, and leaves as hastily as possible without being outright rude. He walks the mile or so to his apartment, nodding to strangers on the street and trying absently not to step on anyone’s toes. His head seems to whir and hum, a distorted echo of the machine he’s been working at all day. It’s evening, and all the streetlights are overly bright. The air smells like several kinds of food, mixed with exhaust from automobiles and the omnipresent undertone of stale urine.

As he approaches his apartment — a flickery, two-bedroom affair stacked on top of a cheap café — Leonard’s pace slows. He feels unaccountably reluctant to go inside, climb the back stairs and turn the doorknob. He frowns at himself. Jim being here is _good_ , if unexpected and totally inexplicable. Leonard really is happy to see him. He’s thought of Jim often over the nine months or so since they parted. When he’s feeling very small in the big city, he sometimes calms himself with memories of evenings spent on a golden farm under a wide blue sky. On that farm, he never felt small or uprooted. He felt like a goddamn tree.

It just doesn’t make _sense_ for Jim to be here. Leonard asked him to come, yes, but he knew as he did that the answer would be no. And it was. Jim said what Leonard had known he would say: he belonged to the land, he couldn’t walk away from it.

Leonard can’t fathom what Jim has done. For him to leave Riverside must have been like cutting off a limb (and Leonard has seen, far too many times, what that does to a man). For him to be _here_ , in San Francisco…unbelievable.

He forces past his reluctance and climbs the steps, trailing a hand along the rail just to make sure he’s still in touch with the physical world. When he reaches the top, he only hovers for a fraction of a second before sucking in a breath and clasping the knob. Bits of rust flake off under his fingers.

He finds himself half-expecting the place to be empty. It’s just not conceivable that Jim Kirk could be in his San Francisco apartment. The idea won’t arrange itself in his head. He opens the door.

Jim is leaning against the kitchen doorway, backlit by a golden glow from the kitchen window, still wearing dusty traveling clothes and that absurdly charming smile of his. He straightens as Leonard comes in, says, “I thought I heard someone on the stairs,” and waits for Leonard to set down his bag and hang his hat and coat. Jim’s own hat is on the peg set aside for guests. Then Jim takes Leonard by the shoulders and looks him up and down, still smiling. “Leonard McCoy,” he says slowly.

“In the flesh,” Leonard agrees wryly, because what else are you supposed to say to that? He smiles sideways, then sidles past Jim and into the living room, where he sets himself on a couch with a groan and a sigh. Jim follows and sits a foot away from him.

There’s silence for a minute or two. It’s hard to know what to say in this situation. Finally, Jim clears his throat and says, “Not a bad place you’ve got here, sawbones.”

Leonard raises an eyebrow. “We both know that’s a lie,” he points out. “And don’t call me that.”

“What, sawbones?”

Leonard feels himself flinch, and grimaces. “Bad memories. You know.”

Jim looks keenly at him and nods. “I guess I do know. Sorry.” He pauses and chews on his lip. “How about just ‘Bones’?”

“What do I need a nickname for?”

“You don’t, really.” Jim shrugs. “But I like it. Suits you. So, what about it?”

Leonard crosses his ankles on the low table in front of him. “Don’t see a problem.”

 

***

 

They cook dinner together. Jim doesn’t know where to find anything in Leonard’s kitchen, and Leonard derives a certain amount of satisfaction from the fact. His own first days in Jim’s kitchen were rife with misplaced utensils and slamming cupboard doors.

They talk idly while they eat, and after they’ve cleaned up, Leonard reaches into the back of a cabinet to retrieve a bottle of his favorite bourbon. The moonshine in San Francisco is considerably better than the swill they shared back in Iowa, and he pours them each a generous helping. They sit on the couch and tap their glasses together. Leonard drinks deeply and leans back with a sigh.

“Y’know what I want?” he asks, closing his eyes.

“Hm?”

“A mint julep. Georgia-style, y’know? That’d hit the spot.”

“A…what?”

Leonard sits up abruptly and turns to look at Jim. “You don’t mean to tell me you’ve never had a mint julep before.”

Jim spreads his hands apologetically. “I’m afraid I haven’t.”

“Poppycock.” Leonard gets to his feet, sets his glass down, and picks up the bottle of bourbon. “You haven’t _lived_ , Jim. Sit tight, I’ll make you one.”

Jim doesn’t sit tight. He appears over Leonard’s shoulder while he’s stirring sugar-water on the stove, waiting for the sugar to melt. Jim dips a finger into the water and tastes it. “So, what is a mint julep?”

Leonard raps his knuckles with a spoon. “You’ll see soon enough. Go out back and pick me some mint, would you? The folks who run the café keep a little herb garden there.”

“And you’re allowed to use it?”

Leonard shrugs. “Nobody’s ever told me not to. Besides, I pay rent, don’t I?”

While Jim is off getting the mint, Leonard digs around in a cupboard for a pair of pewter cups and then sets to work cannibalizing the block of ice that’s keeping his icebox cool. By the time Jim gets back, Leonard has a reasonable pile of chipped ice, and lets Jim hoist the block (now noticeably smaller) back into its slot in the icebox.

“Your drip tray’s almost full,” Jim notes as he goes to close the icebox.

Leonard, dropping mint leaves into glasses and pouring warm syrup over them, grunts acknowledgment. “You can toss it out the window.”

Jim does so. Leonard muddles the mint and syrup with a spoon until the air is filled with the sharp, sweet smell of spearmint, then adds ice and bourbon to each glass. He stirs them smoothly, watching frost form on the outside of the pewter, and nods in satisfaction. “All set. C’mon.”

Even in June, it’s chilly in San Francisco, so they don’t go outside to drink as they might have in Iowa. They return to the couch and Leonard hands Jim his cup. If they sit a little closer together than before, neither of them remarks on the fact.

Leonard raises his cup. “To reunions,” he says. “I hate surprises, but this one’s okay by me.”

Jim grins and raises his own drink. Then he stifles a yawn and laughs at himself. “To a good night’s sleep tonight,” he replies. “My back still hurts from sitting in those train seats all night.”

“Well,” says Leonard, “I don’t have a guest bed, but this sofa’s comfortable enough. I’ve fallen asleep on it a few times myself.”

“It’ll do.” Jim’s eyes are twinkling as he takes a sip of his julep, then they flutter closed. “You’re right, Bones,” he says, tilting his head back. “I hadn’t lived until this moment. Why did nobody ever tell me a drink like this existed?”

His eyes are still closed, and Leonard takes advantage of the opportunity to examine him up close for a few seconds. He looks much more relaxed than Leonard feels. “Guess you haven’t been talkin’ to the right people,” he says in answer to Jim’s question.

Jim smirks. “Until now.” He opens one eye to look at Leonard. “This alone might make it all worth it. If I hadn’t sold my farm, I never would’ve learned about mint juleps.”

 

***

 

It takes Leonard a long time to fall asleep that night. With the bedroom door ajar, he can just make out the slow, even rhythm of Jim’s breathing where the farmer — or ex-farmer, now — is asleep on the couch.

Leonard would never tell anyone, least of all Jim, but he hates being alone all the time. He craves family, community, the presence of other people in his life. He hasn’t been very successful at making friends in San Francisco, and the simple knowledge that Jim is close by is incredibly soothing — a balm after the long months of loneliness.

Even so, he’s tense, and his mind takes too long to turn off. He hums a lullaby under his breath and finally drops off, eyes falling shut as he stares at the ceiling.

Leonard wakes to the buzzing of his alarm clock and sits up in bed, rubbing his eyes. It’s hard to believe it’s morning already — once he managed to get to sleep, he slept so well and deeply that it seems like no time has passed at all. He rolls out of bed and dresses groggily, then wanders out into the kitchen to find some breakfast.

Jim is there, standing at the stove and humming to himself as he flips flapjacks on a griddle. Leonard stops short in the doorway, momentarily overwhelmed by the sight. He’d almost forgotten.

Jim adds a pancake to the growing stack on a plate to his right, and catches sight of Leonard. He grins. “Morning, Bones.”

“Mornin’,” Leonard repeats, and forces himself to stop staring. He opens a cupboard and digs out two slightly wrinkled apples. He lifts one in Jim’s direction, raising a questioning eyebrow, and Jim nods. “Sleep well?” he asks, and tosses the apple in Jim’s direction.

Jim catches it and polishes the fruit on his shirt. “Like a baby,” he replies. Leonard bites into his own apple and watches Jim pour another circle of batter onto the griddle. “You?”

“Well enough,” Leonard says. He leans out of the kitchen to check the clock in the living room. “I’ve gotta leave in half an hour. What’ll you do today?”

Jim swallows a mouthful of apple and glances out the window. “Guess I’d better see about a job.”

“Mm.” Leonard nods. “A bed, too. You can’t keep sleepin’ on the couch forever.”

Jim looks at him, the smallest furrow between his brows. “You’re all right with me staying here?”

“I could hardly kick you out after you came all the way from Iowa just to see me, now could I?” Leonard points out. He catches a flicker of doubt in Jim’s eyes and waves a hand. “Jim. You’re more than welcome. I like havin’ you around.”

Jim’s expression relaxes into a smile. “Good, ‘cause you’d have a job getting rid of me. I’m told I can be a real pest.”

Leonard smiles with half his mouth and jerks his chin at the griddle. “You’re gonna burn that.”

 

***

 

Leonard lingers a little too long over the flapjacks (not quite as good as his mother’s, but still delicious), and as a result is a minute or two late for his shift. The nurse at the front desk looks up as he hurries in, and nods a greeting. “Good morning, Doctor McCoy.”

“Mornin’, Miss Chapel,” he responds, pausing on his way to the stairs. “Anythin’ I should know about before I go up?”

She scans a piece of paper and shakes her head. “Nothing new. You have a surgery at nine, and another this afternoon. Mrs. Bradley’s caesarian is scheduled for five o’clock. Some kids came in overnight with a few broken bones, but Doctor M’Benga patched them up.”

He nods and tips his hat. “Thanks.”

Upstairs, he makes for the surgical ward. He’ll have to explain, again, what exactly the operation entails, then assess the patient’s physical condition before sedating her and getting to work. The nurses can handle some of the work, but Leonard prefers to oversee everything himself.

A scraping sound to his left startles him out of his thoughts and he looks around to see that the door of the lab is standing ajar. That’s odd. He and his research partner are the only ones who use that lab these days, and they’re not meeting again until tomorrow evening. Frowning, Leonard pushes the door open and sticks his head inside.

Spock looks up from a partially-disassembled fragment of machinery that Leonard recognizes, after a moment, as the imaging array from their X-ray unit. He’s got a tiny screwdriver clutched in one hand, a coil of tungsten wire in the other, and a variety of other tools and parts arranged neatly on the lab bench in front of him. He raises an eyebrow.

“Doctor McCoy,” Spock notes, turning back to his work. “Good. You can assist me.”

“With what?” Leonard narrows his eyes at the other man. He really shouldn’t be here without permission. “What're you doin' here, Spock? We’re not meetin' till tomorrow.”

“It would not have been logical to delay my work once I understood what needed to be done.” Spock clips a length of wire and twists it into the innards of the machine. “I will require your expertise shortly.”

“With _what_?” Leonard demands again. Spock glances up.

“I believe I have identified the source of the discrepancies in our test scans. I will need you to confirm the accuracy of scans taken after I have remedied the problem.” He selects a piece of tubing from the table and examines it closely. “Please give me a knife.”

Leonard almost argues — he doesn’t like the way Spock talks like he’s in charge, like there’s a hierarchy here rather than a partnership, even though Leonard works at this hospital and he doesn’t. But Spock has apparently solved a problem that’s been plaguing them for weeks, so Leonard swallows his pride and digs up a scalpel from a nearby drawer.

In another ten minutes, Spock declares that he’s done. Leonard, peering over his shoulder at the machine, can’t tell exactly what’s changed, but he helps Spock put the machine back together, then straps on his protective gear while Spock prepares a film and ducks into the imaging chamber. They’ve been running scans of his hand to test the machine — the fairly complex skeletal structure means any flaws in the image should be apparent, and somehow it seems safer than blasting radiation at his ribcage day after day. An added benefit to their habitual scans is that Leonard can keep a close eye on any changes to Spock’s health that might be blamed on the radiation.

The scan takes a few minutes to run. Leonard paces around the machine, hands behind his back, looking it up and down. It’s a good machine — much sleeker and sturdier than the wartime portables, and capable of producing much more detailed scans. In theory, at least. They’ve been having some challenges in that area, but if Spock’s right (and Leonard can’t deny that Spock is usually right), that particular problem has been solved.

The scan finishes. Leonard stops his pacing to carefully peel back the film and hold it up to the light, while Spock emerges and comes to stand behind him.

Leonard grins slowly.

“Well, would you look at that.” He turns around and pulls open a drawer, lifting out a pile of film sheets bearing ghostly images of Spock’s hand. He studies several of the older scans, confirming the regions of blurring and random dark spots that obscure the true condition of the bones. Then he holds the new scan up to the light and looks closely. _No need to get cocky_. But sure enough, this scan is crystal clear and well-defined. None of the bones appear warped, and all the joints are clearly delineated. Spock’s hand is in good condition, but Leonard knows without a doubt that the tiniest of fractures would show up on a scan of this quality.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/161542031@N07/48537504131/in/dateposted-public/)

He looks up at Spock, his smile widening. “I’ll be damned,” he remarks. “You really did it! Doctor Spock, you’re a goddamn genius.” He claps the other man on the shoulder and lets out a delighted laugh.

The faintest satisfied smile seems to flicker across Spock’s features, then he merely gives a curt nod. “Our progress today is encouraging. I will return tomorrow evening as planned.” He starts clearing away the tools and unused parts still covering the bench where he was working. When he’s done, he makes his way for the door, pausing only to give Leonard another nod and a “Good day, Doctor,” and leaves.

Leonard frowns after him, twisting a pen between his hands. He looks down at it and purses his lips. “Genius,” he mutters, “blasted automaton.” He leaves the pen lying on the table and goes to see to his patient.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> update: look at that art! art!! wow!
> 
> woo! it's been a while. life has been...all over the place, a little bit. but i finally got back around to this fic and got something done. ish. i'm not super happy with it, but i have high hopes for the next chapter.
> 
> so, yay for Bones POV! and yay for our favorite austere scientist pal! I'm stoked to work on developing the triumvirate dynamics now that we've got all three of them.
> 
> that said, I'll be taking off traveling soon and probably won't be online a lot for the next couple months. I'll probably try to crank out another chapter before I leave next week, but no promises.
> 
> the historical grounding of this chapter is pretty shaky. I couldn't find anything online about whether your average guy in the 20s would have ice on hand for eating purposes - all the info is about the trade in ice used to keep iceboxes cool. so i decided Bones would use that ice. new block's getting delivered tomorrow, and he doesn't have a ton of food in the icebox right now anyway. he's not strictly sure that the ice is 100% safe for human consumption, but you can't make a julep without ice, so he'll take what he can get.
> 
> the other thing that's reeeeal iffy is the X-ray machine. I've done a fair bit of googling, but I still haven't found detailed info on how a 20s-era radiograph would be set up. that's why it's all very vague lol.


	4. Another Face in the Crowd

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fair warning: this chapter includes a war flashback which, while not overly graphic, is not very pleasant. if you'd rather skip it, just keep an eye out for the big block of italic text toward the beginning of the second scene, and scroll past it.

Jim ducks out of the flow of foot traffic along the sidewalk and does up a few more buttons on his shirt, squinting at the sky. It’s mostly clear and blue, but the blue is sort of watery and the sun’s warmth doesn’t seem to quite penetrate the way it should. Jim takes a deep breath and tries not to choke on exhaust fumes.

He hasn’t been on this street before, but he trusts his sense of direction. In any case, he can always ask a local for directions back to the hospital and find his way from there. It helps that this part of San Francisco is mostly a grid, unlike the bewildering twists and turns of the hilly street he wandered onto this morning.

 _Who’d build a city in a place with so many damn hills_ , he thinks, and stuffs his hands into his pockets. He looks around, noting a variety of restaurants, shops, and odd little businesses whose purpose he can’t discern. Nowhere that seems particularly likely to hire him. He shrugs and turns the corner.

Glancing up at the street sign as he does so, he gets a little jolt of surprise when he realizes he recognizes this street. St. Mary’s Hospital is a few blocks east. Maybe he’ll run into Bones.

His mood lifts a little at the thought, and Jim’s gait relaxes slightly as he merges back into the endless flow of pedestrians. When someone gets a little too close in his effort to convince Jim to buy some fish, Jim just smiles and nods politely as he slips past. He’s not big on fish.

Jim is watching the buildings, keeping an eye out for the the smooth, square lines of the hospital on the right. Distracted, he doesn’t realize he’s on a collision course until it’s almost too late, and he dodges inelegantly, crashing into the other man’s shoulder.

“Watch where you’re going, pal!” snaps the other man, turning on his heel.

Jim blinks at him, then grins and folds his arms. “Watch where you’re going yourself, Bones. I thought doctors were supposed to be smart.”

“Oh.” Bones scratches the back of his head. “Hi, Jim. Uh, sorry about that.” He gestures vaguely with his other hand.

Jim waves away the apology. “What are you doing here? You’re going the wrong direction to head home.”

“Restless energy.” Bones purses his lips, then corrects himself. “Actually, I was makin’ for a nice little speakeasy I know and love. Wanted a drink.”

“Bad day for you, too, huh?” Jim turns around to walk beside Bones, going back the way he came. “I’ve been up and down near every street in San Francisco, looking for work. Everybody’s either not hiring, or the manager’s not in, or I’m ‘not what they’re looking for.’” He looks ruefully down at his clothes. They’re a little faded, a little scuffed, and decidedly plain in comparison to what everyone else in this city seems to wear. “Guess I know what that means.”

Bones nods and frowns, looking down at the sidewalk. “Wish I could help, but I’m afraid I don’t know much of anyone outside the hospital, and I don’t think we’re hirin’.”

Jim grins a little at that. “I think I’d need a little training before I signed on as a nurse.”

“Hm.” Bones smiles too.

“So, which way to this speakeasy of yours?” They’ve reached an intersection, and Jim comes to a halt, looking around. Bones seems to hesitate.

“You know,” he admits after a moment, “I don’t think I want a drink anymore.” A cable car trundles along the street to their right, and after a moment, Leonard’s smile widens. “C’mon, let’s go.” He leads the way across the street and they clamber onto the vehicle as it turns a corner.

Jim leans against a pole and watches the streets roll past. It’s evening — most people are probably heading home for supper — but it’ll be an hour or so before the sun sets, and the sidewalks are still bustling. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.” Bones leans against an adjacent pole, legs crossed at the ankle, one side of his mouth still quirked upward. Jim shrugs and goes back to watching the city. Out the opposite side of the streetcar, he can see a lush green park dotted with families and young couples.

The buildings get lower as they move away from downtown, and the streets lose some of their frantic energy. Jim takes a deep breath and could swear the air is clearer, too. Maybe a little saltier.

Bones nudges his shoulder. “Wake up, farm boy. We’re here.”

Jim starts and looks up. They’re coming around a bend in the road, and opening up before them on the right is a wide blue-grey expanse that could only be —

“The Pacific,” Jim breathes, and hops off the streetcar in Leonard’s wake. The Pacific isn’t quite living up to its name this evening — a vigorous wind from the northwest is whipping the water into crests that break a little ways offshore, and Jim thinks he probably wouldn’t want to be out in one of the little fishing boats he can make out against the glimmer of the lowering sun.

Bones leads the way down a little trail that cuts across the slope from the road to the shore. The trees they pass, subjected to the near-constant buffeting of sea winds, all lean comically inland. Jim sucks in a lungful of that wind and feels himself relax.

“Here,” says Bones, and turns right around a cluster of trees so slanted Jim is surprised they haven’t fallen over yet. The doctor comes to a stop just on the other side of the trees, and lets out a long breath. “There she is.”

Jim, following, stops just behind Leonard’s shoulders and echoes his awed sigh. “Wow.”

“Beautiful, huh?” Bones sticks his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels.

Jim nods, his eyes tracing the outlines of the headlands before him. Rolling hills in mottled yellow and green gather in from the north and south, reaching for each other across an expanse of water that looks, in the distance, like wrinkled silk. Lit by the low sun glancing off the waves, it more than earns its name.

“So that’s the Golden Gate, huh?” he murmurs, watching the streaks of sunlight shift and dance between him and the hills of Marin. The tops of the taller hills still carry the shreds of last night’s fog.

“The one and only,” Leonard agrees. He finds a suitable rock and sits with a tired groan, pulling his jacket tighter against the wind. Jim sits on the ground in front of the rock and leans against it, letting his head fall back and his eyes close. Neither of them says anything for several minutes.

“You know they’re plannin’ to build a bridge across it?” Bones asks, breaking the silence. 

Jim opens his eyes and squints at the misty headlands. “What, across there?” He gestures at the strait. “How far across is it?”

“‘Bout a mile.”

Jim whistles. “How the hell are they gonna pull that off?”

Bones shrugs. “Don’t ask me. I do my job, and I let the engineers do theirs. Tends to work out better that way.”

Jim grins a little. A gull screams and soars across his field of vision. Below him, waves wash against rocks with an endless rhythm that makes Jim into a part of the landscape, just another boulder or tree overlooking the ocean. “So,” he says after a pause, “What’s on your mind?”

Bones grunts and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Oh, nothin’ really. This research partner of mine, he just gets on my nerves.”

“Oh?” Jim glances up at him to see Leonard’s lips working in that way they do when he’s got something to say and is trying to put it into words.

“He showed up at the lab this mornin’ before I even got there. Unscheduled, uninvited. He’d made this breakthrough about the X-ray machine and had to come in to put it right. Never woulda pegged him as the obsessive type, but what do I know?” He scratches his ear. “Well, we got it workin’, smooth as you please. Man’s got a hell of a head on his shoulders, I’ll give him that. So I got all excited — we’d been fightin’ the same problem for weeks, y’see, so I was ready to celebrate. But Spock, he just raises his eyebrow like he always does when I get excited, or angry, or have the nerve to display _any_ kind of emotion at all. Just gives me this disdainful sort of look and says our progress was satisfactory and he’ll see me tomorrow.” Bones shakes his head and presses his palms together. “Drives me clear up the wall.”

Jim has been watching the motions of Leonard’s hands as the doctor gesticulates with his customary vigor. He shifts his gaze back to Bones’ face and rubs his chin, pondering. “Why do you care so much?”

“What?” Bones looks at him sharply.

“I mean, why do you care so much what he thinks of you? You never struck me as much of a sycophant.”

Bones frowns at him. “I _don’t_ care. Just bugs me, is all.”

“You said this happened early this morning, right?”

“First thing.”

“And you’re still thinking about it,” Jim points out. “Sounds to me like you care.”

Bones snorts and looks back toward the water. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew the guy. He’s impossible to get along with.”

“Hm.”

Bones glowers. “Don’t _hm_ me, young man. If you’ve got somethin’ to say, spit it out.”

“All right.” Jim shrugs. “It just seems to me that if the problem is that he’s hard to get along with, you must want to get along with him.”

“Well, of course I want to get along with him,” Bones snaps. “We work together. You ever tried workin’ with someone who hated you?”

“Plenty of times, actually. But it doesn’t sound like he hates you. Just sounds like he’s not going out of his way to make friends.” Jim gives the doctor a thoughtful look. “Which makes me think the real problem is that you want to be friends with him, but you can’t.”

Bones snorts again and gets to his feet. “You’re being ridiculous.” He heads back up the hill, and Jim, with a long last look at the sparkling waters of the Golden Gate, follows.

 

***

 

The next day is a cold one. Not cold like an Iowa winter (biting and sharp with the smell of snow), but _chilly_ — a slow, persistent cold that winds its way into Jim’s joints and makes him burrow deeper into his jacket with each step. The fog, which usually burns off by late morning (Jim, ever the farmer, has noted the local weather patterns without meaning to) lingers well into the afternoon today, and in some places it’s so thick that it turns into a fine, misting rain. It’s impossible to stay completely dry in this weather.

Jim is miserable.

He’s been wandering the streets for hours, looking for work, to no avail. He’s pretty sure he’s been up and down every sidewalk within two miles of downtown, and his feet are beginning to hurt. He’s not used to walking on pavement all the time. Now he’s headed out to the Embarcadero, with a nebulous hope that he might find a job at the docks.

“I thought the economy was supposed to be good,” Jim mutters, and watches people saunter by, laughing, in their fur-lined coats and gold jewelry. Not that he’s exactly desperate — he has the money he made from selling his farm, after all — but he’d rather get a job sooner than later, so he doesn’t run the risk of having to live off McCoy’s charity.

Jim turns right onto a busier street just as a too-big truck roars by, engine rattling, and belches a cloud of exhaust in his face. He inhales some of it by mistake, and doubles over, coughing —

_Jim doubles over, coughing, and his legs threaten to buckle beneath him. He forces himself forward, one step at a time, staggering, trying not to hear the choking screams of the soldiers unlucky enough to be behind him. A hand clutches at his ankle and he kicks it off, doesn’t let himself wonder if the hand belongs to someone he knows. It almost undoubtedly does._

_There’s the hint of a breeze off the sea somewhere to the north, and it clears the gas out of the air slowly. Too slowly. Jim is barely alive by the time he comes to in a small pool of his own bile, and when he pushes himself to his hands and knees he can’t help seeing that too many corpses litter the ground behind him. His eyes and nose are streaming, and his lungs burn as he struggles to breathe. Underneath the stronger scent of chlorine, a faint odor of old hay lingers in the air, and Jim thinks that he’ll never feel the same about hay after this._

_After an interminable span of time — maybe two minutes, maybe two days — he is back in the trench. The smell of it hits him first, and for a moment he thinks almost longingly of the bleach-and-hay odor of the gas. The trench closes in on him, tight and dark and full of death. Hands urge him toward the makeshift hospital ward, where men too wounded to be moved, or else not wounded enough to be sent away from the front lines, lie groaning on dirty mattresses too thin to be much use. Several men cry out in pain, or mumble senselessly in their sleep. Jim staggers forward for another step, but his lungs seem to have stopped working. He can barely keep his feet._

Then there is a hand on his shoulder, and a concerned voice in his ear. A woman’s voice. He blinks once, twice, three times, and her face swims into view. Jim notices distantly that she’s young — pretty and fine-boned, with smooth dark skin and eyes sharp with concern.

“Sir?” says the woman, and there’s a certain hesitance in her voice as she addresses him. “Sir, are you all right?”

He’s pressed against a filthy brick wall, shoulders hunched and fists clenched at his sides. When he tries to take a deep breath, he finds that his breathing is fast and shaky. His hands are shaking too, and covered in a film of cool sweat. Jim is ashamed to discover there are tears in his eyes.

“I’m fine,” he says automatically, working to bring himself back to reality. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and takes stock. The high buildings lining the street — _the trench_ , he thinks, and has to correct himself — press in on him. His throat is thick with automobile exhaust, not poison gas, and he takes a moment to reassure himself that there’s no scent of either bleach or hay. The cries that fill the air come from salespeople advertising their wares, not from the throats of dying soldiers, and the stench of old urine rises not from bloody mattresses but from the bricks he’s leaning against. Jim forces down the urge to vomit and pushes himself away the wall.

The young woman is still watching him closely, and Jim does his best to smile reassuringly at her. From the look on her face, it’s not working. She folds her arms and purses her lips. “Are you sure?”

“I think so.” Jim scratches the back of his neck. “I was headed for the wharf.”

She nods, and is about to reply when she is roughly knocked aside. A burly man with an unkempt beard snarls, “Watch where you’re going,” and calls her something that makes Jim’s blood run hot with anger.

Before he can second-guess the decision to get into an altercation with a bigger man in his current condition, Jim steps forward. He interposes himself between his rescuer and the stranger, straightening up to look the taller man in the eye. “You want to try saying that again, _sir?_ ” he asks.

The stranger looks him up and down, scoffs, and spits at his feet. “I said, scum like that oughta watch where it’s going.”

There aren’t a lot of things Jim Kirk is particularly proud of, but his right hook is one of them. His knuckles collide squarely with the stranger’s jaw through a bristle of beard, and the other man stumbles backward with a stifled cry, bracing against the brick wall to keep his feet. His eyes flare, and for an instant Jim thinks he’s going to fight back, but the stranger seems to decide it’s not worth it. He spits a final invective and hurries off down the sidewalk.

Jim looks after him and flexes the fingers of his right hand. “Well,” he remarks, “that was easy.”

He turns to look at the young woman, and finds her watching him coolly, arms still folded. “I don’t need you to protect me.”

Jim rubs his knuckles and looks at her. She’s slender, yes, and disarmingly pretty, but there’s a definite steel in those eyes. This is a woman who knows her business. He nods slowly. “No,” he agrees, “I don’t suppose you do.” He glances over his shoulder to where the stranger has already disappeared around the corner. “But that guy was asking for a good wallop.”

She doesn’t respond, so he goes on, “Look, I’m new here. I’m a country boy and I’m completely lost in this big city of yours. I only know one person in all of San Francisco, and I could use all the friends I can find.” He tries another smile. “What do you say you look out for me, and I’ll look out for you, Miss…?”

“Uhura.” She considers him for a long moment. “You said you were looking for the docks?”

He shrugs. “That was the plan. I need a job.”

“I might be able to help you there,” she offers. Jim suspects she’s looking for a way to repay whatever debt may exist between them, as quickly as possible. “I work over in the telegraph office,” she explains. “We’re expanding into the lot next door, and they’re hiring construction workers this week.”

“I can do construction.” Jim grins. “How do I apply?”

“Come with me.” She jerks her head and leads him back down the sidewalk and across the street. Another truck rumbles by, and Jim carefully holds his breath until the thick plume of exhaust has dissipated.

 _The war’s over_ , he tells himself over and over as they walk, matching the words to the rhythm of his footsteps. He keeps his eyes fixed on the back of Uhura’s head as she weaves through the crowd in front of him. _It’s over. It’s done._

 

***

 

Jim starts work the next Monday. It’s a reasonably sunny day, and the hard manual labor leaves him sweaty and overheated in a pleasant way. He’s missed _working_ , he realizes, and using his hands to build a new wing of the telegraph office is not quite as satisfying as using them to grow a crop of corn, but it’s good enough. He gets along with the men he works with, finds them easier to talk to than most people in this city. They’re of a similar stock to the men he knew in Riverside: solid and friendly, with strong arms and ready laughs and not too many personal questions.

Jim doesn’t talk to them about the stars. Such men only scoff at dreamers.

He meets some of the people who work inside the telegraph office, too. He only sees Uhura once that first day, and she barely spares him a nod, but when they stop for lunch, Jim finds himself talking to a technician who’s been called in to fix a broken machine.

“My name’s Montgomery Scott,” the man says through a thick Scottish brogue and a mouthful of sandwich. “But most folks call me Scotty.”

Jim grins. “My name’s James Tiberius Kirk,” he replies, “but most folks call me Jim.”

Scotty swallows and smiles back at him, raising his eyebrows. “Tiberius? Really?”

“Really.” Jim takes a bite of his own lunch and chews. “Family name.”

“Aye.”

After work that day, Jim and Scotty go out for a drink at a place Scotty knows. He’s lived in San Francisco for eleven years, and knows all the best places.

“I should introduce you to Bones,” Jim muses as he sits across from Scotty with a glass of beer. “He’d love to learn all your secrets.”

“Bones?”

“Leonard,” Jim corrects himself, taking a sip. “My friend. He’s been in the city less than a year, and he’s always on the lookout for a good source of liquor.”

“Sounds like a man after my own heart,” Scotty says with a smile, leaning back in his chair while he sips at his whiskey. “I’d like to meet him.”

Jim smiles too, and feels at ease. “Drop by sometime. He makes a mean mint julep.” Not that he has much basis for comparison.

Scotty sets down his glass with a satisfied sigh and spins it on the table. “Aye,” he says, “I just may do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay! I'm glad I managed to get this done before I leave tomorrow morning. it's not my favorite chapter I've ever written, but it's got some scenes I'd been planning since the beginning and was looking forward to writing. also happy to have some more familiar faces.
> 
> and now I'm leaving the country and probably won't post anything until September at the earliest.
> 
> the place where Jim and Bones went to sit in the sea air and look at the Golden Gate is Lands End, which (according to my map of 1925 San Francisco) was right along a streetcar route at the time. I was originally going to have them sit at the Golden Gate itself, but then I found out that the Presidio was an active military base at that time, so they probably couldn't have just gone there to chill and look at Marin.


End file.
